The present invention relates to the preservation of food. More particularly, the present invention relates to apparatus for storing and dispersing food preservatives in a closed food container.
The preservation of food has been an important concern to mankind since the beginning of time. A problem associated with this concern is the fact that preservatives could not be stored with the food without the food losing its color, flavor, or nutritional value. In fact, many food stores today sell only natural, non-preserved foods for these very reasons.
In order to utilize a preservative with a food product, the preservative must either be incorporated within the food itself or else put on an absorbent and placed adjacent to the food in a closed environment. The former type of preservation is undesirable since chemical additives incorporated directly into the food may be harmful to the human body.
The latter choice, placing the preservatives onto an absorbent and allowing the preservatives to evaporate, is a preferred preservation method. One of the first gaseous preservatives to be used was gaseous ethanol. However, gaseous ethanol was not entirely satisfactory because even after a brief exposure period, the food tended to become tainted with an ethanol odor. U.S. Pat. No. 4,550,026, discloses improved gaseous preservatives wherein aliphatic acids are added to the ethanol. The ethanol/aliphatic acid preservatives were found to reduce these ethanol odors.
The above described gaseous preservatives are typically used by placing the preservatives on an absorbent material such as silicon dioxide, sucrose, dextrin, fine crystalline cellulose, and kalorin. The preservatives are then allowed to evaporate to provide a preservation atmosphere around the food substance. There is however, one problem with this method. That is, there is not an effective way to control the time of evaporation.
Another problem with the above listed absorbents is the safety to consumers. Absorbents which are packaged as sachets, paper bags, and plastic bags, are not aesthetically appealing and the average consumer psychologically resists purchasing an item which has foreign entities inside or around his food. Plus, since these packages do look much different from the food itself, infants tend to be attracted to this oddity and may attempt to put the absorbents in their mouths.
In addition, the manufacturing of conventional absorbents is not efficient. Production is very expensive and there is high tendency for the packages which hold the absorbents to puncture and break. This in turn leads to lost production time and increased costs.
Consequently, a need exists for improvements in food preservation absorbents which will result in greater preservation efficiency, safety to consumers, and manufacturing efficiency.